Metal vapors have shown great promise as media for stimulated Raman scattering devices. The metal atoms have the advantage of producing large frequency shifts which can employ excimer lasers such as KrF, XeCl and XeF to generate radiation in useful regions of the visible spectrum. A suitably chosen atomic metal vapor species will have energy levels with splittings close to the pump frequency so that the Raman scattering process will be enhanced by resonance effects, thus requiring short optical paths and low vapor densities. For various pump lasers and for various desired emission wavelengths, it is desirable to be able to choose a metal vapor species without restriction, and to produce vapor densities of the order of 10.sup.16 .fwdarw.10.sup.17 cm.sup.-3. The conventional technique produces the vapor by simply heating the elemental metal within a hot cell. This method presents several difficulties: (1) For some metals of interest such as tungsten or rhenium, the required temperatures are difficult and expensive to achieve in any container for a long time period. (2) For almost all metals, the temperatures required to produce the necessary vapor densities are inconsistent with the use of all-hot systems. As examples, iron and scandium, two species of interest for producing blue-green emission from KrF, XeCl and XeF lasers, would require temperatures of about 1800.degree. C. and 2000.degree. C. respectively to produce densities of 10.sup.16 cm.sup.-3. At these temperatures, no windows of acceptable optical quality exist, and therefore a cell would require a central hot zone with cold (room temperature) windows. This results in a diffusion of vapor to the cold region and a limited operating lifetime for the device. The invention described herein permits the production of suitable vapor densities from a wide variety of metals at moderate temperatures which are compatible with conventional glass and metal construction. Thus, long operating lifetimes are realized.